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Workout of the Day

A) High Bar Back Squats 5×3
Use the same weight across in every set

B) GHD Situps
3 sets of 8-12 reps

*compare to 2/15/16 and try to increase difficulty of reps by moving your hand position

Strength!

Programming workouts around the Open is a difficult task. For five weeks, the Open workouts will be announced on Thursday evening, and we’ll be doing them as our daily workout the very next day. History shows that Dave Castro, Director of the CrossFit Games, includes a wide variety of movements in the Open workouts. Which gives us a small problem in determining what to do the day before and day after. I would hate for anyone to have to do 100 box jumps two days in a row (or, God forbid, 100 burpees!)

We also know that the Open workouts will be high-rep, high-heart rate affairs. The only time they included a max lift was the Clean & Jerk in 2015… and that came in the 6 minutes immediately following a blistering 9 minute AMRAP of snatches, deadlifts, and toes to bar.

So, what are we going to do on the Thursdays prior to the Open workouts for the next five weeks? Heavy Back Squats.

This is my all-time favorite picture of a squat.

The back squat has never been included as a movement in the Open. We’re going to do them heavy and for low reps, which we also know is unlikely to occur in the Open. We’ll use this as an opportunity to get strong with the King of All Exercises.

We’re also going to switch up the standard protocol of attempting a rep-max every time we lift heavy (which is progressive within the workout). For the next five weeks, we’re going to be doing 5 sets of 3 reps at the same weight for every single set that day. Your goal for this 5-week period is to increase that weight on the bar by 5-10 lbs every week, so that we’re progressing workout-to-workout instead of set-to-set.

This strategy will allow us to accumulate more volume at a higher percentage of your 3RM. Your five work sets should be HARD. Since we’ll be doing it every 7 days, you’ll also have very good recent data on how much you can lift. Instead of trying to guess what your 3RM might be based on a 5RM from 2 months ago, you’ll have good data in hand.

We’ll spend class time warming up to your work sets, and we’ll talk about how to set the weight for the first week. After that, if you successfully completed all 5 sets the previous week, you add 5-10 lbs.